Great article Maarten — really got me thinking.

I could be talking a different language than most of the discussions here (Wittgenstein comes to mind), but I’m thinking about my own core values, one of which is “stillness”. For me, stillness involves getting out of my head and contacting reality (e.g. focus on breath or sensory experiences). When I’m in pain, I lose this sense of stillness, and tend to go back to thinking mode (or worry etc..). So could it be said that pain can cause the absence of something you value. Whether stillness can be objectively or operationally defined is another thing, but it’s something that jumped out at me.

Granted, I could be way off track here haha

I wrote an article on values and principles that I think you might enjoy.